Summary

An aubade is a morning love poem, and “Monday Aubade” is an ode to the speaker’s lover’s body. The poem begins with vivid, tender descriptions that become a landscape, and the landscape a “New World,” with the repetition of the theme of love as conquest from previous poems. The landscape then becomes a dying fire, the dawn, and the realization that the speaker is waking up alone, and the relationship is in the past.

“When the Beloved Asks, ‘What Would You Do if You Woke Up and I Was a Shark?’” uses the title to establish the conversation the speaker and her lover are having, and then moves right into the speaker’s mind as she considers her reply. The speaker says that her lover does not realize she has thought about this question a lot. The speaker says that if her...